


love, thy taste is poison

by LunaChai



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hanahaki Disease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22707172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaChai/pseuds/LunaChai
Summary: Felix coughs peach blossoms, her favorite. / hanahaki au.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 30
Kudos: 265





	love, thy taste is poison

**Author's Note:**

> a big thank you to Star_on_a_Staff for supplying me the meaning of peach blossoms, and indirectly empowering this roller coaster of an angstfic!
> 
> so... something happened recently that was very painful, and it made me want to stop writing stories altogether because i couldn't see the point of writing. but i don't want to give that thing power to take away my lifelong, inborn love of writing. so here we are. 
> 
> onward we go!

Felix coughs peach blossoms, her favorite.

The first petal comes at Ailell, swaddled with the shimmering, volcanic heat. It expels from his throat in an unsightly heap of velvet pink splattered with crimson, wrapped in saliva and sitting like a profound mess in the heart of his glove. It pulses oddly, an unshapely heartbeat held in his palm.

He stares at it in bewilderment and confusion for a long moment. Then he casts it aside and grinds it under his heel, remembering that they're in the middle of a battle, and he doesn't have time for anything other than the heat of combat and sting of steel.

The petal dissolves into ash against the hellish wasteland. Felix presses onward, putting the incident out of his mind.

.

.

.

If Felix is honest with himself, which he never is, the problem began way before Ailell, baring its first fangs at the Millennium Festival.

He entered the grounds flanked by Ingrid and Sylvain, expecting nothing but desolate, graveyard emptiness, perhaps punctuated by the occasional bandit. Instead, he found wild commotion: an entire den of thieves surrounding the monstrous hulk of an unrecognizable beast, and next to it—a familiar sheen of mint-green that made his heart soar to his throat.

He spared a cursory nod at Ingrid and Sylvain before they split ways, veering around crumbling corners and vaulting over twisted corpses.

Three thieves passed his way. They were felled with simple, clean strikes, each one sharp and lethal. Felix had learned not to hold back over the past five years.

Then to his right, he heard the familiar shriek of slicing winds. An arc of green cut across the midnight clearing, slamming into rubble and toppling it like an overgrown chess piece. He heard a cry, keening and sharp, and the force of it pulled at his chest until he was running towards it.

_He knew that voice._

He darted around the remains of a fallen wall and nearly ran into her, tiny in cream-and-burgundy and vibrant with life, the flame of her hair awash silver in the moonlight.

Annette Fantine Dominic.

At first, she pulled back, wisps of green energy crackling up her arms—but then her eyes lit up in recognition. He didn't expect her to throw herself forward, flinging her arms around his middle. She was smaller than he remembered, her head pressing into his chest and her chin flush with his throbbing heart.

"Oh, Felix, it's been so long!" she breathed, laughing like a clear song.

He stood there awkwardly, his mind stumbling repeatedly over a single line of her song over and over, trapped like a broken instrument: _In your heart you're desperate for the sweet embrace of light—you're desperate for the sweet embrace of light—the sweet embrace of light—_

Dammit. Five years, her songs had been like this. Trapped in his brain, bouncing endlessly off the walls like a ricocheting arrow.

He managed to gather enough coherent thought to raise a hand, patting her hair. "Hi, Annette," he mumbled. "Yeah. It's been a while."

She stepped back to beam at him, her eyes still as soft and blue-grey as a cloudy sky. She'd grown over the years, blossoming into a lovely woman with clementine locks that tumbled past her shoulders; her gentle figure was no longer shrouded by the boxy cut of a uniform, but instead wrapped in creamy cotton that swayed over the curves of her chest and hips. The Annette in his mind, who had been small and bright and hilariously teasable, had grown into someone uncomfortably pretty.

"Busy now," she said brightly, "but you, me, tea, talk later. Good to see you! Bye!"

She disappeared into a cluster of trees, burgundy vanishing in forest-green. Felix felt an odd, lumpy rattle in his chest, as if he'd accidentally breathed an ice cube down the wrong pipe and now it was stuck in his lungs, slowly melting away.

He chalked it up to the adrenaline of combat and dismissed it, peeling back into the ruins of the monastery. In the end, there was a boar and a professor to see.

.

.

.

The coughing worsens throughout the month. One petal becomes two, and the attacks strike Felix more frequently, and—seemingly—at random. They hit him during the counsel table, during training, during meals, and he can't seem to find any common thread.

So he finally dashes his pride, musters himself, and sees Mercedes.

Mercedes tells him that the disease is well-known in the East, but lesser in Fódlan: The Dagger of a Thousand Flowers, it's called. Caused by intense unrequited love, fist-sized flowers take root in the lungs and slowly blossom until the patient chokes to death.

Yes. Caused by unrequited love.

Felix laughs when he hears of it, a coarse laugh that rattles around half-eaten peach blossoms. Love? Romance? Him? It's a ridiculous thought. Women have always been the furthest thing from his mind. He's had more than enough of them simpering up to the Fraldarius doorstep, eager to involve themselves with the right-hand house to the Crown. He always ignored them all, focusing single-mindedly on his own training, on becoming _better faster stronger_ than Glenn's gravestone and Glenn's shadow.

_That's not possible,_ he tells Mercedes, his tone flat and condescending.

In a rare display of dry wit, she only lifts a blood-splattered peach petal to his face, raising a brow. The words are stolen from his tongue.

She continues her explanation. Ordinarily, there's good news and bad news, she says—but in his case, there's only good news. With the advancements of Faith and a dabble of medicinal herbs, they can carefully uproot the flowers and cure his illness for good. The primary downside is that Felix will lose all feelings for the object of his affection, and he'll only regard them with apathy—but to Felix, this matters distinctly less than it might with other patients. What matters, and what has always mattered to him, is only his ability to fight and win: nothing more, and nothing less.

_Well, what are we waiting for,_ Felix says drily. _Let's do it._

They schedule the ordeal for the next week. Mercedes needs time to prepare.

And, at the very least, Felix wants to know the cause for all of this trouble.

.

.

.

It takes three days before Felix pinpoints the cause of his illness.

He stumbles upon it by accident, really. He's casually passing by the greenhouse—semi-casually, really, and half-planned if he'll admit it to himself—when he hears the familiar strain of a sweet little voice, happy and carefree:

" _Rise up like the butterflies, you happy little greens! Rise up to be cooked and served and plated before queens! Yum, yum, herbs and salads, soups and sandwiches too. What I wouldn't give this day to eat all of you!_ "

He's grinning foolishly wide as he steps into the greenhouse. Annette Fantine Dominic is pirouetting without a care in the world, watering can spraying fronds and flowers in a chaotic mess. Watching her has always been such a stark—and welcome—contrast to the grim reality of their current situation.

Felix clears his throat.

" _Bah!_ " Annette cries, flushing red to the roots of her hair. "Felix! Stop—stop springing up on me like that!"

"Maybe if you didn't sing so loudly, you'd hear me come in," Felix points out. Not that he really means it. He can't imagine a world where Annette doesn't sing.

Annette's eyes narrow and she turns away, straightening her shoulders. "Well," she mutters sullenly, thrusting a watering can in his direction, "if you're going to be mean, you might as well be mean and useful."

Felix takes the watering can with a slight smile. His fingers lightly brush Annette's, and he freezes for a moment, an odd feeling sputtering in his chest.

Annette blinks, shaking the can at him. "Felix?"

He shakes it off and all but wrenches the can from her. "Yeah, yeah, watering," he mutters.

"Not those!" Annette shrieks, latching onto his arm. "Those are the—they're Dedue's special flowers, they'll die with too much water, remember?"

Unfortunately, Felix has frozen solid, his arm half-raised and pouring water into the garden bed. Annette's arms are linked around his and her frame is hugging him _very_ tightly and he's overwhelmed by the strange, unfamiliar urge to drop the can and wrap his arm around her waist.

Annette, completely oblivious to his breakdown, seizes the can and flings it away. It clatters onto the tile behind them. "Felix! Are you listening?"

"I," Felix says, and coughs with a dry mouth. He swallows and tries again. "Sorry. I don't know what happened."

"I can tell you what happened," Annette groused, stooping to pick the can back up. "You almost drowned some poor, innocent flowers. What did they ever do to you?"

His eyes are trained on her as she stands. When she turns back to him, the sun hits her hair in a way that makes it flare, orange-gold rising like phoenix fire. Felix's throat shudders, and he coughs. Then he feels a painful catch in his lungs, and before he knows it, he's hunched on the ground, retching.

"Oh sweet goddess—" Annette's irritation clears into worry, and she stoops next to him. Her hand lies on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Her touch sends flames up his arm, and he pushes her hand away. "Fine," he rasps, and before she can stop him, he tears out of the greenhouse.

He coughs violently one last time. Three bloody petals fall from his mouth, curling in the crooks of his fingers.

Felix stares at them in disbelief. He crushes them in his palm and drops them into the lake.

.

.

.

Felix cannot believe that his body has the sheer gall to tell him that a mild, surface-level interest in a girl's silly little songs means that _he's in love._

It has nothing to do with the fact that five years prior, the professor was dead set on pairing them to pull weeds, week in and week out.

It has nothing to do with the fact that in every skirmish and every mission, he always kept a careful eye out for her safety. And somehow, that habit bled into their monastery life until he was often lurking about the edges, overhearing her charming little songs and overseeing her dainty footwork.

It has nothing to do with the fact that when her father rejected her again and again, she sought him out, angrily kicking at the dummies on the training grounds until she dissolved into tears on the dusty floor.

It has nothing to do with the fact that over the five years since their academy days, they exchanged letters. Most of them were short and perfunctory, but sometimes she'd include little doodles and poems, and sometimes he'd include books.

It has nothing to do with the fact that somehow, they've sort of become friends.

Even now, Annette often pulls him into the dining hall— _did you eat lunch, are you sure, Feeelix, you can't keep skipping meals to train_ —or drills against him to hone her reflexes— _don't go easy on me, come on, I need to dodge at least one blow in close combat_ —or grabs him on her weekly rounds of feeding the monastery cats. And now that he knows his ridiculous condition, he's keenly aware of the stuffy, vibrating pain in his lungs with every breath he takes.

Unrequited love, Mercedes said. Unrequited.

Neither word has ever bothered him before. He's never cared. Love was always a ridiculous obstacle, whether requited or unrequited. Ingrid's unwanted proposals and Sylvain's antics only solidified his opinion on the matter.

But now, every time he sees Annette's sunshine smile and turns around, lungs trembling until he hacks up a peach petal, he understands that odd, irrational pain.

And in the end, he understands why people might cling to what hurts them most.

.

.

.

On the day of the operation, Felix approaches Mercedes with a single question.

Suppose, hypothetically, he says—just hypothetically, mind her, that he's "fallen" for someone who's an artist, or a writer. If he enjoyed seeing their paintings or reading their works, and went through this procedure, if the Dagger of a Thousand Flowers was uprooted in him, would he also lose all enjoyment for their creations?

The answer is immediate and firm: yes.

Humans are, Mercedes explains, unable to completely separate a creator and their creations. So long as Felix is aware of the connection, he will never be able to enjoy those works again.

But, she says, it won't affect his enjoyment of anything else. He can find new paintings and new books and new songs—he'd mentioned musicians too, hadn't he?—to enjoy.

Felix considers this for a long moment. He thinks of how Annette's songs had plagued him for five years, how he'd often wished them away, how he'd cursed the day he ever heard them. And he thinks of how _steaks and cakes_ sustained him through dreary dinners of politicking, how _a flash of light_ eased his darting pulse and quickening breath during all-too-keen nightmares, how _creepity creep_ kept his senses alert in the late watches of the night. Much of his life had been dark clouds, and now he was to be rid of what little silver lining remained.

So Felix settles on a choice that makes no sense: he rejects the treatment.

He explains very little, and thankfully, Mercedes doesn't make him elaborate. There's a sad light of understanding in her eyes, and he wonders if he's that simple to read. Someone like him, who's always been single-mindedly obsessed with bettering himself in combat, _willingly_ making a decision that would handicap his ability as a fighter—it was an odd decision indeed, and not one he would make lightly.

_If you ever change your mind,_ Mercedes says somberly, _let me know straightaway._

Felix tries to change his mind. He spends the better part of two weeks trying to change his mind, to gather the courage to forget Annette's songs and squash the meager joy they bring him.

He doesn't succeed.

.

.

.

Grondor Field almost kills him.

Felix coughs at too many inopportune moments, ragtag petals of peach blossoms scattering beneath his boots. He tries to keep himself together, and for the most part, it works. He's able to dodge and parry any lethal force headed his way, only to receive an arrow in the shoulder for his trouble.

He downs a vulnerary and keeps going. War leaves no time for the weak.

He doesn't miss the passing looks of concern from Ingrid and Sylvain as they fly by him, covering the army from the skies. But they don't ask questions, and he doesn't supply answers. It's not the right time.

The Blue Lions see the battle through to the end. Felix staggers upright, wiping his mouth from phlegm and blood. His vision is spinning, but he's standing, he's whole, and they've won. Things could be worse. Things _have_ been worse. Still, he can't entertain this illness for too long if he wants to stay useful, stay _winning._ He starts to think that maybe, surgery would be a better idea, that it'd be better to let go—

—but then the irreversible happens.

The Shield of Faerghus is broken with a dagger in the back.

Rodrigue passes without a single mention of him—always focused, as he always had been, on Lambert, on Glenn, on people who were dead and gone instead of the living who pleaded for his attention. Just like the boar.

Felix's gut is burning and his throat is tight as he throws open the door to Annette's room without ceremony, stumbling over his own feet. Annette turns, surprise etched on her features—but her expression quickly bleeds into concern, eyes drawn and lips parted. She steps to him, her hands reaching up to grip his shoulders, to stabilize him in a world where the floor is gone.

"Sing for me, Annette," he rasps, his throat clogged with petals. "Please."

She asks no questions. She holds him as she settles on the duvet of her bed, lacing her fingers into his hair as she sings gentle and somber. Royal blue, royal blue, she sings, a shield into the sky, a tune for the old. Royal blue, royal blue, a sword into the hand, a hope for the new.

He clings onto her even tighter, ignoring the burning fire in his lungs. He's gone his whole life feeling the pain of being unloved. Another day won't hurt.

.

.

.

The agony of his father's death doesn't strike like a dagger, bloody and piercing, but like the crushing blow of a hammer that aches with every pulse.

Felix tries to throw himself into training to ease the wound. He pushes himself until he's hunched over the grounds, coughing blood, fingers unable to wrap around the hilt of his sword. It takes Ingrid and Sylvain together to haul him back to his room. They don't dare lock him inside; they know he'd just endanger his life to break out the window, and they all have their own ways of mourning. But they're always there, bringing him meals he doesn't eat and blankets he doesn't use.

When he keeps pushing himself, Annette starts arriving.

Seeing her makes the hammer strike deeper, resonant and echoing in the void that fills his chest. She's just another reminder of his failures, his emptiness. He's lived his life unnoticed by the ones who mattered the most, and she's no exception.

Annette sits at his bedside, wrapping his broken fingers in her own, and sings to him as she heals his skin. _Rest, fair one, in a bed of flowers; rest among sun and rest among showers; rest 'til dawn after darkest hours._

He falls for it, and with him, his last hope of an operation.

He can't stop seeking her out, his soul begging for just five minutes of the comforting lilt of her voice, transporting his mind to a place that is soft and clear, where he thinks he might understand the value of love, even if he's never felt it for himself.

Surgery, living, would give that up.

For all his strength, he's too weak to handle that.

.

.

.

Peach blossoms mean, in a sort of delicious irony, _I am your captive._

As Felix's coughing worsens with his dependency on Annette's songs, he reflects that, yes, he is indeed held captive. By himself, more than anything else. Annette's voice has stuck him in a prison but left the door wide open, and instead of walking out, he's just sitting in the cell to listen one day more. Her silly songs—no, her charming, pure joy and vibrancy—is like a siren's song, leading him into the dangerous unknown, and he lets it.

He is sadly, pathetically, incurably her captive.

As they trek north to Fhirdiad, Felix's condition starts to take its toll. He's able to contribute to retaking the capitol, cutting down Kingdom traitors and Titanus alike, but as Dimitri and Byleth are swept up in the aftermath of their triumphant entry, he's bedridden, coughing petals in the far wing of the palace.

Ingrid and Sylvain are occupied with assisting the newly reinstated king of Faerghus, so it's up to Annette to visit him with a dark and thunderous glare.

There's no song as she storms his accommodations, scowling at the general decor before turning her anger onto him. She's supposed to look intimidating with crossed arms and a dour frown, but Felix finds himself strangling back a smile. He always thought she looked kind of cute when she was angry, which was probably why he kept teasing her.

"Felix," she says sharply.

"Annette," he greets back.

Her eyes spark with irritation at his mild response. She strides closer, her eyes flickering over him. "You're not well," she says, tone clipped.

"Interesting observation."

"You haven't _been_ well for months."

She's coming a bit too close for his liking. Felix feels a petal start to scratch his throat.

Annette sinks a hand beside his pillow, leaning over to stare at him with intensity. "Are you going to tell us what's going on," she says, "or are you going to make me find out the hard way?"

"The hard way?" Felix asks, raising a brow.

Without preface, Annette seizes his arm. He feels her white magic searing up to his shoulder, searching his system for the first sign of an injury—

Felix jerks his arm away. Annette lets it fall on the bed. The white magic bleeds away, listless.

"I really don't want to do it, because it feels like a violation of privacy," Annette says, her eyes burning, "but if it's your _life_ at stake, all bets are off."

He stares at her, unable to speak. He never expected her to go this far; but then again, he's not sure what he expected from Annette.

The idea starts to take root in his mind. Maybe _that's_ the solution to this whole problem. If his feelings are the issue, then he should tell her. She's the root cause, so she can cure it, he can go back to fighting, and nothing will be wrong anymore. After all, this disease is impeding his ability to fight, so the solution is obvious—tell her about the Dagger of a Thousand Flowers so that she can—

Fix it? Somehow?

But how?

Felix's tongue freezes in his mouth.

If he really says this, says _I'm going to die because I'm apparently in love with you,_ then what kind of burden will that place on her? If he _does_ die, will she blame herself? Will she be awash with pain, with guilt, with shame, thinking that his death was completely her fault—

—that she should've been _better faster stronger_ —

—that she should've done something impossible to save him?

She's earnest and determined and always takes the responsibility on her own shoulders, and he knows that if he tells her this, tells her now, then she'll feel that weight forever. Maybe her sunny smile will disappear, and maybe she won't sing again.

He can't risk that.

"Felix?" Annette prompts, her face dark but drawn with worry. She leans closer and his chest burns.

He instinctively shoves her away.

His hands push at her shoulders and she stumbles back, catching herself on the nearby drawer. A flicker of hurt crosses her face, pulling at her lips and cheeks in a way that makes his gut sore.

"Sorry," he says. His throat is rough around peach blossoms. "It's nothing."

Annette's expression melts into anger. She hikes up her dress and stomps to him, slapping a hand on his bedside table.

"Don't give me that," she hisses. "You drove yourself in the training grounds until it almost _killed_ you. Even when you were sick, you'd sneak out of your room to go train. Nothing could keep you away, and believe me, we all tried. So don't you _dare_ say that it's nothing, Felix!"

"You think this is any easier on me?" Felix snaps back. "I'm the one who's dying, not you."

Annette steps back. Shock paints her face ghostly white. Felix wishes he could take those words back.

"You're dying?" she whispers.

He scrambles for a way to play it off. It's one thing to have _him_ handicapped, but to distract the whole army with concern would be monumentally stupid. "It just feels like it. Who knows. I'll probably be better in—"

"What is it." Her voice is flat. "Tell me that much. What's plaguing you?"

Petals are throbbing in his lungs. "I don't see why you need to know," Felix mutters thickly.

"Because I can—I can _research_ it, it's the _one_ thing I'm good at, Felix, reading! I might be able to help you!"

Felix watches the blazing blue in her eyes, the whiteness of her knuckles, the furrowed crease of her brow.

He could tell her.

He could say that his illness was because of her.

And then she'd be crushed from guilt.

"No," Felix says softly.

Fury fills Annette's eyes with tears, and she storms out of the room. Felix lies back, feeling the agony rattling in his lungs. He coughs, an entire blossom wrapped in blood this time.

Damn. He's usually a selfish bastard. He must really be in love.

.

.

.

Annette tears daisies from their stems and throws them on the ground.

"He hates me," she mutters to herself. "He's just a stubborn jerk. He hates me. He just a stubborn jerk. He hates—"

She's run out of daisies in the immediate vicinity.

It's official. Felix hates her. So decreed Nature itself.

Mercedes finds her in the outskirts of the palace and settles next to her, always elegant in camel-and-chocolate skirts. Annette glances at her, then resumes her fairly useless activity of tearing up grass.

"Do you know what's wrong with him?" she mumbles. A particularly fine patch of blades meets its end.

Mercedes looks sad, and Annette is sorry that she brought it up. "I haven't found a good way to cure him," Mercedes says wearily.

Annette softens. This must be doubly hard for Mercie, one of the most talented and compassionate healers of their generation. And if Mercie can't cure him, then surely it's impossible.

"I'm sorry," Annette says, reaching out to squeeze Mercedes's wrist. "It must be hard."

Mercedes smiles, and this time it's affectionate. "He has some very difficult choices to make," she says. "Please try to be kind to him."

"Kind to him," Annette mutters. She yanks up another handful of grass. "I'll try. I just, I wish he wouldn't push me away like that."

"I think he cares for you," Mercedes says quietly.

Annette's hands freeze over the grass.

"A likely story," she says cuttingly.

Mercedes rests a hand on her shoulder. "You're the sort who would blame yourself, Annie," she says. "Felix knows that. I think you do, too."

"I'll blame myself even more if I don't do anything." More grass scatters in the wind. "He's just doing this to be difficult."

"After watching out for you every mission?"

The tearing slows.

"After complimenting your singing over and over?"

And stops.

"After accompanying you on every single cat-feeding trip?"

"Because he likes cats!"

"I don't think it's the cats."

Annette stares at the grass, her fingers idly twining into the emerald green.

"Is it really so unthinkable that he could genuinely love you?" Mercedes says.

_Yes,_ is the immediate answer that comes to Annette's mind, but the surety of it surprises even her. She steps back, wondering why she's so certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that Felix—no, _any_ man—could find her desirable.

"You don't think," Mercedes says softly, "that perhaps, the reason why you think you can't be loved is because of your father?"

.

.

.

Gustave hadn't loved her.

Annette grew up knowing that one, singular fact, even as she studied tirelessly, practiced magic without rest, and pushed herself until her feet were bleeding and her eyes couldn't stay open anymore. Her father hadn't loved her, and even while she scoured Garreg Mach for him, she never expected him to.

He must have left because something was wrong with her, because she was unlovable. And she couldn't expect him to love someone unlovable; that wouldn't be fair. She just wanted to bring him back to her mother, to make her mother smile again.

If Gustave, her own father, couldn't love her, then surely no one could.

Annette adored talking about cute boys with Mercedes. The thought of sweet, soft love was much like the confections she liked to indulge in: tasty to consume, but difficult to make for herself. She was never able to fall in love, not properly, with utter abandon and disregard like the romances of old.

And oh, how she tried. The academy wasn't lacking of handsome bachelors, many of them populating her own house! From the earnest, gentlemanly demeanor of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd to the sharp, striking features of Felix Hugo Fraldarius, she expected to be thoroughly head-over-heels for one of her classmates in no time flat.

Instead, where she wanted to find butterflies in her chest, she found only emptiness, as if she had no love left to give.

But Annette wanted to love; no, she _needed_ to love. She lavished encouragement and gifts upon her friends, desperate to find that warm blossom that was missing from her heart. She was _determined_ to love them, to find love and understand it, to claim it back into her own life with her own hands. And she didn't find _nothing,_ per se; she found the brightness of Ashe's eyes as they read together, the flush of Ingrid's cheeks as they pampered themselves with makeup, the softness of Dedue's smile as they cooked side-by-side—but none of it had quite felt like what she was looking for.

At this point, even Annette doesn't know what she wants.

She just knows that she feels lost, and she doesn't know how to find her way.

.

.

.

The army treks their way to Enbarr, and the end is in sight.

Felix clings to the finish line: _almost there, almost there._ He struggles to breathe consistently now, the pain in his lungs barely tamed by a few drops of elixir from Mercedes. Most of the army knows that he's unwell at this point. Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain have tried to corner him and confine him to bed, but he refuses every time. Enbarr is too close, and with it, the end.

_Don't you dare keep me out of this, boar,_ he says cuttingly. _I have one more fight left in me. And I'd rather die on the battlefield, sword in hand, then huddled in a bed like a rotting old man._

They beg him to at least explain his ailment. He doesn't. For one, he doesn't want Annette to know. And for two, he really doesn't want to spend his last moments taking endless teasing from Sylvain.

If he's going to die, he thinks wryly, he's going to die with dignity.

.

.

.

Felix drops his sword in Enbarr, and that's when he knows it's the end.

He's had a good run, cutting down Imperial captains and slicing through regiments of disciplined soldiers, sidestepping his way around blazing spells and whistling arrows. Even debilitated, he's still a menace, and he can be proud of that.

But when he draws into the side corridor of the Imperial palace and his sword fumbles out of his weak, useless hand, he knows he's out of time.

He slumps against the wall, surrounded by bloodied corpses. His chest is tight, constricted, the air barely able to force its way down the tunnels of his lungs. He stares at the far wall where the cobblestone blends together, fighting to keep the remains of his spotty vision.

It would have been nice, he muses, to see them win.

He hears footsteps around the corner and reaches for his sword, but he can't even lift its weight. He opts for drawing a hidden dagger from his boot, but he knows that he's too weak, and this is likely the last encounter he'll ever have.

"Felix," whispers the intruder.

He closes his eyes. Saints help him.

Annette Fantine Dominic rushes to his side, her shoes trekking blood across the carpet. She's already gathering magic to her fingertips, ready to pour it into his body.

"There's still"—his chest rattles painfully but he forces himself through the sentence—"a war to fight, Annette."

"Stay still," she says, crouching at his side. Blood swaddles up her skirt. She ignores it.

"Go." He weakly pushes at her ankle with the heel of his boot. "They need you out there. Faerghus needs you."

"And _you_ need medical attention," Annette says, her tone strained. She tears open his jacket and presses her hands to his chest. He feels the warm glow of her magic prodding his body, searching for injury.

Felix grips her wrist, tearing her hands away. "Too late," he rasps. "You have to keep going."

She tries to force her hands back on his chest, but he's at least strong enough to keep her at bay. "Felix—"

"Go!" It tears from his throat, ruptured by coughing.

"Let me at least get Ingrid and Sylvain," Annette says desperately. "They deserve to know, they'd want to be here—"

"Have we won yet?" Felix says drily.

"No, but—"

"Then don't distract them." He leans his head against the cold stone, closing his eyes. "I'm not going to be the reason why Faerghus lost the war."

Annette is silent for so long that he thinks she's left, but when he opens his eyes, he finds her kneeling there, glaring at him with such ferocity that her tongue is tied in rage.

"Annette?" he says, bewildered, when—

"You're so—you're so _selfish,_ you—how is it even _possible_ to be so selfishly selfless, you insufferable, stupid—" She takes a quick, short breath to rally herself, clearly struggling to find words. "For all you hate knights and chivalry, you sure act like one! What, were you just going to die here, alone, for the Greater Good of His Highness, not even—not even thinking, about, about the people you're leaving behind?"

He hears the tears in her throat long before they shoot to her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.

"Annette," he says dumbly, "is this really the time—"

"My father already pulled this one on me!" she screams, raw and weighty. "You don't get to, Felix! You, you don't get to..."

Her sentence is lost. She sits there in tears, numbly staring at her hands—as if she's surprised herself with her own crying. Felix braces his jaw, gathering the strength for one last painful speech.

"Your father always had a choice," he says. "And he chose not to think about the people he was leaving behind. I'm not like that."

He could have chosen to uproot the disease. It would have distanced him from Annette. It would have removed what little pure, childlike joy remained in his life. Maybe it would have even broken her heart; despite her angry bluster, she seems to appreciate his enthusiasm for her music, somewhere deep down.

To Felix, that isn't a choice at all.

"If I had a choice," he says, and he feels another petal gathering in his throat, irritating his voice, "then I... wouldn't leave you."

Annette's eyes are wide as she stares at him through her tears. He wonders what she sees.

Felix swallows the petal down. "I wouldn't leave you," he repeats. His voice is unusually soft, fading.

Annette's expression changes, and she leans close, her hands seeking his face. Her eyes are misty and stormy, swirling with a plethora of emotion that he can't place.

"Then don't," she begs.

He pulls her in by the wrist. She stumbles into his lap, her frame flush against his. His arms snake around her waist, pressing her closer until he can feel her legs tangled in his and her nose in his neck and her hair on his cheek. She's warm and soft, like peach blossoms in the sun, and the pain in his chest subsides, if just for a moment.

He lingers there, then loosens his grip. He expects her to push him away, but instead, her fingers crawl up and lace into his cloak. She nuzzles just slightly into the crook of his jaw, and he breathes out, heat flushing to his ears.

"Felix," she mumbles, pained. "If there's anything I can..."

She trails off, like something odd has hit her.

Felix keeps his limbs loosely curled around her. If he has to die, he has to admit that this isn't the worst way to go, on the battlefield, just before the dawn of victory, with the woman he is more or less interested in. "If there's what?" he prompts.

Annette is quiet for a moment. "Your heart," she says, her tone airy and wondering. "It's beating so fast."

He snorts, a bit hoarse. "Guess it's going out with a bang."

She raises her head, her eyes flashing daggers, and hits him briefly on the shoulder. He chokes out a bit of laughter, then coughs. Nothing comes up.

The heave of his lungs makes the petulant anger on Annette's face melt into concern. Her hands grip the front of his jacket, and for one blessed, weird moment, she leans in, resting her head on his. She's close enough for him to breathe her in.

"Don't die," she says, and despite the firm command, her voice cracks at the edges. "Don't go, Felix."

He inhales. It's the first full breath he's taken in ages. Something unfurls in his lungs, fresh like the winter wind and clear like the sky.

He smiles, one side of his lips pulling higher than the other. "I won't," he says truthfully.

He tilts up his head, his mouth seeking hers. She melts into him without hesitation. There's blood dotting his lip but it doesn't seem to bother her, and as she sinks her fingers into his hair, she whispers his name.

.

.

.

Annette doesn't know what she wants for herself, and she doesn't care anymore.

She just knows two things:

One, that someone really, truly, honestly loves her;

and two, that she doesn't want to let him go.

.

.

.

Felix recovers slowly after Enbarr.

Annette remains at his bedside, eating curled up on the nearby armchair and sleeping sprawled over his lap. She refuses to budge from his side, save for a few moments of private audience with the rest of the Blue Lions. Who are, understandably, livid at him. Sylvain pulls the whole _you sa-id we'd die together, you said, Felix,_ while Ingrid enters a full-on shouting match that rocks the entire dorm on its foundations, and Dimitri awkwardly holds his hand with a pained word of gratitude while Byleth slaps him over the head.

None of them can claim that he'd made the _wrong_ decision, exactly; countless sacrifices had to be made in the line of war, and calling too much attention to himself would have been dangerously distracting. But they still care enough to be upset, and to Felix, it's oddly touching.

Maybe, in the end, he's not unloved.

He watches Annette one night, asleep at his side with her head resting on his lap. Mercedes enters to check his lungs, and she bites back a smile at the sight. For some reason, Felix feels the need to explain himself.

"I didn't need her to... do this." Return his feelings. Love him. Whatever it is that she's now doing.

"She's always cared for you," Mercedes says wisely. Her white magic searches his chest, gentler than Annette's.

"There's a difference between that and... more." After months of coughing up peach blossoms, he didn't expect her to develop any feelings. He just figured it was his lot in life to die.

"She always thought you were very handsome, you know," Mercedes says with a twinkle in her eye. "She admired you very much for your dedication, even if she spent a good bit of time complaining about how you also seemed dedicated to making her miserable."

Mercedes's admission gives him a little tingle of smug pride, followed by a pinch of bewilderment. He was only trying to _compliment_ the girl, for goddess's sake.

Felix looks down, watching the orange locks woven through his pale fingers.

"What changed?" he finds himself asking. Something had made her step over the line, and it hadn't been him.

Mercedes's eyes fall on her dear friend, and a soft smile breaches her lips. "I think," she says gently, "she learned how to accept your love."

.

.

.

After one week of being bedridden, Felix, lungs healed and sword-hand repaired, is itching to get back on the training grounds.

"I've been idle for long enough," he complains as Annette straightens his curtains and fluffs his pillow. "If I sit around for any longer, I'm going to rot."

Annette purses her lips, eyes flashing. "Nope. You lie there and you sleep. Doctor's orders."

"I told you, I'm fine."

"You are _not_ fine. You almost coughed your organs out at Enbarr!"

"That was ages ago," Felix mutters sullenly. He's not coughing anymore. The Dagger of a Thousand Flowers has long since dissipated, never to surface again.

Annette stops and straightens, placing her hands on her hips. "Alright," she says, glowering darkly. "You asked for it."

She storms close. For one paralyzing moment, Felix thinks that she's actually going to brandish some wind spell and crack his skull against the headboard—but then she kicks off her shoes and _crawls on his bed_ and _settles on him,_ staring lazily at him like a satisfied cat. Her weight pushes him down on the mattress, very much confining him to the sickbed.

"Annette," he chokes, and she only sticks her tongue out at him.

"Now you can't move," she crows triumphantly.

That should be the least of her concerns. He was never one for propriety, and neither was she, but this is reaching new heights of scandal.

"Maybe," he says, suddenly short of breath, "find a more conventional way to restrain me other than being a human sandbag."

She crawls up to lie on his chest, propping her chin on her hands to look at him. "Hey, I'm for effectiveness, not convention," she says. "I thought you'd appreciate that."

Sometimes, for the sharpest girl in the class, she could be awfully oblivious.

"I just want you to rest, Felix," Annette says with pleading eyes, and she _isn't playing nice._ "We almost lost you. We don't want to lose you again."

Felix sighs, defeated, and falls back against his pillows. "Fine," he mumbles. "Tomorrow."

"Two days."

"Tomorrow, midday."

"Tomorrow, evening, light conditioning only, and we have a deal."

He swoops down to kiss her on the forehead, satisfied when she turns pink. "Deal."

Annette hides her face in his chest for a moment. When she speaks, her words are muffled in the fabric of his blankets.

"Does it come easy to you?"

Felix blinks. "What?"

Annette raises her head, and she's blushing furiously. "This whole—this. The change. The... I don't know."

He stares at her, confused. Annette draws herself up until she's arched over him, hands braced beside his head, looking him straight in the eye.

"I'm not so good at this, but I want to learn how to, how to accept love and, and fall for you," Annette says, beet-red, "completely and stupidly, like in books and in songs—"

He arcs a brow. "You sure you haven't already?"

She turns even redder and almost falls on him. "I don't—I'm being serious!" She quiets, propping her arms on his shoulders. Her face is closer. "This is new for me, you know. I, I want to learn it properly."

He smiles, wry and crooked, but it comes from a genuine warmth blossoming in his chest. "I'm not exactly an expert myself. Unless you count unwarranted lectures from Sylvain."

She wrinkles her nose. "Ugh. Any chance you can unlearn those?"

He raises a hand to balance her hip in case she falls. "Not sure. I'd need some new material to fill the void."

Her face warms into a smile, soft and affectionate with eyes that sparkle like the water. "Then I guess it's on me to teach you."

She leans down. Her lips are like sunlight. He arcs up, his fingers threading around her neck, and drinks her in. When she breaks away, her hair falls like a curtain in front of their faces, parting them from the world. She's flushed and beautiful and he never thought he'd be such a sap, but he feels like the luckiest man in the world.

Annette relaxes, huddling on his chest. Her fingers brush rhythmically through his hair, and as the afternoon sun rises, she sings. He closes his eyes and soaks it in.

When she sings, he feels loved.

.

.

.

**fin**   
_s.d.g._

**Author's Note:**

> yeehaw guys pls learn to accept love and compliments <3
> 
> holler with me about felannie over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/lunachaili)!


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